
Statistical Approaches to Paul's Letters
Distributions, Visualization, Cluster Mapping, and Topology
Paul Robertson(Author)
Brill (Publisher)
Published on 18. September 2025
Book
Hardback
210 pages
978-90-04-74135-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book demonstrates the utility of statistical and computational approaches to Paul's letters. Such work helps resolve questions of authorship, describes and quantifies aspects of Paul's style, and explains structural relationships within and between Paul's letters. A series of linked case studies deploy a shared set of top-down stylistic features to differentially analyse Paul's seven undisputed letters. Each chapter explores a different digital approach, co-written with a subject expert in this method. Chapters range from a history of the field to theoretical branches of mathematics, with each chapter providing a case study applying a different method to issues within Pauline Studies, with progressively more sophisticated statistical, computational, and mathematical models.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
472 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-74135-5 (9789004741355)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Paul Robertson, Ph.D. (2013, Brown University), is Senior Lecturer in Classics & Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of New Hampshire, and Research Associate in the Department of New Testament and Related Literature at the University of Pretoria. His books explore comparing early Christian literature (2016), theorizing inter-religion (2019), selfhood and the Cyclops myth (2022), and the anthropology of belief (2024).
Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: History of Stylometry and Digital Approaches to Pauline Style
Part 1 Describing and Distributing
1 A Poisson Analysis of Paul's Letters
?Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson
2 Zipf's Law and Paul's Literary Techniques
?Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson
Part 2 Mapping and Visualizing
3 Mapping Paul's Letters: Grouping, Identifying, and Plotting Stylistic Features
?Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson
4 Analyzing Paul's Letters: Cluster Mapping and Comparing across Features and Letters
?Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson
Part 3 Abstracting and Theorizing
5 Topology: Persistent Homology and Paul's Letters
?John Lind and Paul Robertson
Conclusion
Appendices
References
Index
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: History of Stylometry and Digital Approaches to Pauline Style
Part 1 Describing and Distributing
1 A Poisson Analysis of Paul's Letters
?Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson
2 Zipf's Law and Paul's Literary Techniques
?Thomas McCauley and Paul Robertson
Part 2 Mapping and Visualizing
3 Mapping Paul's Letters: Grouping, Identifying, and Plotting Stylistic Features
?Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson
4 Analyzing Paul's Letters: Cluster Mapping and Comparing across Features and Letters
?Ashley Roy and Paul Robertson
Part 3 Abstracting and Theorizing
5 Topology: Persistent Homology and Paul's Letters
?John Lind and Paul Robertson
Conclusion
Appendices
References
Index